“Don’t see Trader,” he said. “Where is the hard-assed son of a bitch?”
Ryan ignored the question, asking one of his own. “You live alone here?”
Danielson nodded. “Yep. Last citizen of Fort Fubar. The only Farer town in the Barrens, if that means anything.”
“Don’t,” Jak grated.
Farers were a loosely knit but far-flung conglomeration of nomads who traveled Deathlands trading goods, tech and even themselves to villes. However, Farer territory was usually confined to the Midwest.
“You’re a long way from your stomping grounds,” J.B. said. “Where’s everybody else?”
Danielson sucked in shuddery breath. “Taken.”
“Taken where?” Krysty asked.
“The First Kingdom.”
“Talk sense,” Ryan growled.
“The city of Aten.” Danielson’s tone was matter-of-fact. “I lived there, too. For a long time. I was a trusted member of Pharaoh’s court. But after Connie died, things changed. I wanted out. I came back here.”
J.B. gave Mildred a baffled look. “You have any idea of what he’s rambling on about?”
“Yes,” she said tersely. “Let him talk.”
“I escaped Pharaoh’s power, you see.” Danielson tugged open the front of his coverall. Hanging from his weathered neck by a loop of rawhide was an amulet the size of a man’s hand. Made of a dull, nonreflective metal, it was shaped like a cross with the traverse arms squared and the top rounded.
“An ankh,” Doc spoke up.
“Yeah,” Danielson replied. “Keeps Pharaoh’s mind out of mine. Not that he noticed he couldn’t get in there anymore. Guess even a god-king’s heart can break. They left me alone out here. Lately, though, the Incarnates started nosing around, like they were hunting for something. Or somebody.”
“You, mebbe?” J.B. asked.
Jak suddenly stiffened. “Hear noise.”
The others waited tensely, expectantly, as the teenager turned his head to the right and to the left, like a hound casting for a scent.
“Not sure what it is,” he stated. “Coming closer.”
Ryan arose and went to the doorway. Pushing aside the hanging, he looked up and down the sand-swept avenue between the shacks. The dry air vibrated with a low-pitched hum, like a distant swarm of bees, undercut by a steady mechanical clicking. The others peered through the cracks and chinks in the wall boards.
Two shapes hove into view from the far end of Fort Fubar. Ryan stared, screwed up his eye and stared some more. Almost unconsciously, he muttered, “What the hell.”
A pair of two-wheeled vehicles rolled from the direction of the desert, but they didn’t resemble in configuration or form other wags he had ever seen. Boxlike wooden chassis were overlaid with intricately worked borders of brass, copper and bronze. The vehicles were two yards long, shaped roughly like upside down, elongated U’s. They sat on low-slung platforms atop heavy axles, positioned between two very large spoked wheels. The wheels were of some dark wood and rimmed with metal. No power source was visible, though sunlight flashed dazzlingly from a reflective surface at the rear of the platforms. They looked like carts, but they obviously had some artificial source of power.
“By the Three Kennedys,” Doc muttered, gazing over Ryan’s shoulder. “Horseless chariots.”
Ryan realized Doc’s description was fairly accurate. He had seen pix in books of those ancient modes of wheeled transportation. The absence of harnessed horses or other beasts of burden had confused him.
As the chariots hummed and clicked closer, Ryan saw that each one carried three man-figures and none of the six looked human at first, or even second glance. Muties, was his first thought. A moment later, he was forced to reassess his snap judgment.
“Gaia!” Krysty breathed in a trembling tone. “What are those things?”
Each of the six men in the chariots was similar in build and clothing. They were naked except for loosely woven white linen kilts. Glittering collars of beaten gold rested on their broad shoulders and enclosed the bases of their necks. All of them were dark skinned, deeply tanned by long exposure to the merciless desert sun. In height and breadth, they looked enormous, with heavily muscled arms and legs. Each one held a long, slender silver rod, tipped by V shaped prongs.
Only their heads differentiated them from one another. The men wore jeweled helmetlike headpieces, which were secured snugly beneath their jaws by an interlocking arrangement of leather straps.